Future

After a high octane gauntlet of the charity haunted houses, the raves, the readings, the music, the art, Evan Scovill started awake (trembling) in the corner of his bedroom. He sat drenched in his own sweat, staring at his hand after wiping it away, then scrambling up and rushing to the bathroom mirror. He was, indeed, wearing manliner. "What the actual fu---?" he stammered, still shaking with the bass beat of so much life loosed upon the world, a delirium of dream that shouted respectfully to death to wait ... just wait. "Don't be such a poo emoji!" Faux Gabrielle had laugh-shouted at him above both the din of the band on stage and the umpteenth black vodka cocktail. "Live! LET YOURSELF LIVE!" Evan remembered this as he began to tremble for a different reason now; a wave of icy cold traveled from the floor and up his spine to the top of his head, creating a thick layer of frost on the tiles and the countertop. Over his left shoulder, reflected in the glass (now edged with ice), stood a shadow darker than other shadows - the outline of a man carved from pitch. "Please tell me," Scovill whispered in terror, "that you are not the Spirit of Halloween Future?" And the thing (for there was no real way to assure himself that the darkness was human at all) extended its hand.